Si Vis Pacem

by Robin Banks

  6.

  Watching Nate and Dee leave is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t cry, but that turns out to be impossible. The most I can do is hold my tears until their ship has swallowed them, when they can’t see me anymore, and contain myself so instead of sobbing I’m merely weeping, but it’s pretty fucking obvious that I’m not holding myself together. Rody came down to the spaceport with me, obviously, and that doesn’t help at all. I’d rather eat my own shit than fall apart in front of him, even though I know that he wouldn’t hold it against me. It’s not too much of a problem because I don’t think he can see me: he’s too busy wiping the tears out of his eyes to stop me seeing them.

  We walk all the way back to the Academy pretending that we’re fine. When we get to our room we sit in our respective spots without saying anything until dinner time, when we walk together to the refectory in silence. We sit in our respective spots there, too. I cave in about five minutes into it because I just can’t eat: my eyes keep straying to the places where Nate and Dee should be and my stomach feels like a giant knot. It all seems too much like pointless suffering, so I shuffle one seat over to sit in front of Rody. He looks momentarily startled and his eyes seem to annoy him for a few minutes, but we both manage to finish our meals.

  Being alone with Rody is so much hard work that I am tempted to find myself a dudebro to bunk with for the night just to take the edge off things. I know it’s self-inflicted: Rody and I could get on well enough if we could just admit that we’re hurting, but we can’t, so we don’t. We resentfully accept each other’s presence instead, which doesn’t help at all. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, because his ship is scheduled to leave in the morning.

  I walk him to the spaceport, even though he tells me that I don’t need to. I do, actually: I need to see him leave, to lodge his departure in my brain as something that happened and won’t be undone. The moment he’s out of sight, my eyes let me down in the worst possible way, but it doesn’t matter anymore. There’s nobody here to see it. There’s nobody here for me, nobody at all.

  I get to my ship early. My brain seems to take way too long to process information these days, and I want to give it a fair chance to get on board before I have to actually get on board. I sit my ass on a bench right by the ramp and watch the ship get loaded. It still doesn’t feel real.

  I’ve been staring vacantly into space for longer than is good for me, when six cadets – no, not cadets, they are Probationary Patrolmen now – march up into the ship. Seeing them causes my heart to sink into my shoes. Three of them are dudebros, one of them someone I spurned at the start of the year; that won’t be awkward, I’m sure. The other three are completely unknown to me, although I think I recognize two of them from the advanced tech labs. I waste a bit of time trying to work out who is likely to be in which position. If I could put names to faces, reading the ship’s list would have given me that information, but my brain doesn’t have that function. It should be easy enough to work out, anyway. The techies will be techs, I’m sure, but what will the dudebros be doing? They can’t possibly be piloting; that’s a job that requires an IQ above room temperature. Guns? Would anyone put a ship’s guns in their hands?

  What I really need to know is who the other pilot and co-pilots are going to be. Those are the people who will affect my life the most, apart from the Patrolmen in charge. Not getting on with my co-pilot would really suck. If there is friction with the other team that won’t be great, but it won’t be as big a deal. My main concern is that the chances of a bunch of dudebros gracefully accepting that I’m flying their ship are minimal. Nothing in their upbringing prepares them to trust someone who is smaller, weaker, darker, and female to boot. I am pretty sure I can find ways to kick their sorry asses into line, but I’d rather not have to. The prospect of months on a vessel where everyone hates me doesn’t fill me with joy.

  This is what I signed up for, though. If that’s how it pans out, I have nobody to blame but myself. I’ll just have to suck it up.

  The last three cadets stumble through the docking bay door – literally. Two of them walk like Nate and Rody used to, always getting under each other’s feet and randomly colliding for no discernible reason. They’re talking like Rody and Nate, too, interrupting each other every third word, their hands carrying out at least half of the conversation. The third guy seems happy enough to be tagging along with them, but is clearly not as close to them as they are to each other. I don’t know any of them. I guess this is us, then. Great. Not.

  As the two buddies shove each other up the ship’s ramp, the third guy looks over his shoulder and spots me. He thumps one of the guys in the back to make him turn around, which obviously makes his buddy turn around, too. Third Guy says something to them, thumps them on their way, and turns back down the ramp and towards me.

  He doesn’t even pretend to be just strolling around the docking bay for some random purpose: he makes a beeline for me, though his eyes are flickering on and off my face. Apparently he finds the floor here at least as interesting as me. That suits me fine, because I am really not up for this.

  When he gets within two feet of me, he clears his throat. “You’re Pax, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  I look up at him. I thought he was just asking the question without meaning it, as people do, but he looks genuine. “It’s not my bench.”

  “But you’re using it.”

  He smiles and a nail stabs me in the chest, because he looks just like Nate would look if Nate’s face was made out of matched components. He has the same translucent complexion without the scattering of moles, the same golden-brown hair without the wild waves in it, the same grey eyes but placed at a reasonable distance from each other, and regular adult-sized ears. He even has a full-grown chin. When he smiles, a dimple appears on either side of his mouth. He is a very handsome guy, I think, but right now all I can think is that he isn’t Nate, and I resent him for that. It’s unfair of me and I know it, so I try to be less of an asshole than usual and smile back at him. That seems to work: he sits down next to me.

  “I’m Evans. The other one.”

  “What?”

  “There was an Evans who came over from Pollux. Dax. He came with the first intake. I’m the other one. Riley.”

  “Oh. I remember him now. No relation?”

  “Actually, he’s my cousin. We grew up together. I visited him a bunch of times, but you wouldn’t have seen me. You guys were busy.” He presses his lips together. “Dax had a lot to say about you guys and how you took care of him. Thank you.”

  I hate it when this happens. “It was my job.”

  “If you say so. I thought you’d get on the medic track.”

  “I thought about it, until I actually worked in a med bay.”

  “Ah.” He turns away from me and stares at the ramp in front of us. “Yeah. That’d do it. You don’t remember me, do you?”

  I hate it when this happens, too. He is absolutely right: I don’t remember him. I could have sworn I’d never seen him before in my life. Saying that to him doesn’t seem terribly appropriate, though, so I tell him the truth.

  “I kinda struggle to recognize people out of context. Sorry.”

  “We took a few classes together.”

  “Ah. Which ones?”

  He smirks, and his smirk is so like Nate’s that the nail in my chest digs deeper. “Pretty much all of them. Floating. Flying. All the tech labs. The lectures, too, but you hardly ever turned up.”

  “I…”

  He shrugs. “I don’t stick out as much as you. Sorry!” He looks down at me tentatively. My expression seems to reassure him. It’s not as if what he’s telling me is shocking news. He clears his throat again. “Your friend left a few days ago, didn’t she?”

  “Dee? Yes. She’s off terraforming.”

  “I heard about that. She went with Nate, right? He’s a great guy. They’ll do great. I know they will
. It’s still hard, though, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  He leans forward and rests his chin on his hands. “You know what the most amazing thing about life is? It doesn’t matter how much work you put into building one for yourself. However much you invested in it, walk away from it and it all disappears. You’d think your old life would follow you somehow, that what you built with people may hang on to you. Instead it seems that the moment you’re off people’s radar, you might as well be dead. The only things that follow you are your problems. Those have a tendency to come with. But everything and anyone else… It takes so much work to get somewhere, to build something, and losing it all is the easiest thing in the world.”

  He turns to stare at me, his eyes dark with concern. “I didn’t mean that your friends… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just… I was supposed to stay here on the tech track. I had it all worked out.”

  “Why did you enlist, then?”

  “Brady. One of the Pollux guys. He took my spot. Well, no, he didn’t: he took the spot I wanted to take. I can’t begrudge him that. He needs it more than I do, and he’ll be better at it than me. The guy can’t string two words together, but he knows his tech.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what it is about this guy, but he seems to have an aptitude for throwing me off-balance.

  He takes a deep breath, shakes his head, presses his lips together, and turns to face me. “I am sorry. That was a bit dark.

  “Lil’ bit. But you’re alright.”

  “Glad to hear you say that. I’m going to be your co-pilot.” He blushes. “Well, I wasn’t going to be, but Matt and Danny, you know, those guys I got here with, Matt is piloting and Danny is co-piloting, but they’re on different watches, and they’ve been best friends since forever, so they’d like to swap so they can be on duty together, and we asked, and apparently it’s no problem, if it’s OK with you, that is…” He trails off, looking so flustered that I have to work really hard not to giggle.

  “Yeah. I’m good with that. Provided you behave yourself.”

  The smile returns to his face, and yeah, I can confirm: it’s pretty.

  “Behave myself?”

  “Do as you’re told.”

  “Oh yeah?” He raises an eyebrow. “I thought the co-pilot’s role was to support and advise the pilot, not to suffer in silence.”

  “Alright. But you can’t cry or call for your mommy.”

  “Man, I’ve seen you in the sim. If you fly like that in real life, I will most definitely cry.”

  “Quiet whimpering is acceptable, I guess.”

  “No loud sobbing?”

  “Nope. It would distract me or annoy me. Or both.”

  “Well, I’m glad you warned me. I will do my best to control myself.” He gets up and stretches. “I think it’s time. Are you coming?”

  “I guess I better. Hey, I wonder if they’ll let me fly out of here.”

  “I fucking hope not. I’m too young to die.”

  I give him my best scowl and he gives me back a smirk. We stroll through the docking bay and up the ramp without saying anything, but it feels comfortable rather than awkward. I steal a couple of glances at him as we go. The way he looks still annoys me, but I know he’s not doing that on purpose, and those two friends of his looked like they could be half-decent people. Maybe, just maybe, this is going to work out alright.

  Glossary

  ‘Arc knife’. Arc blades can cut through anything without going blunt. Unsurprisingly, they make people somewhat nervous and are banned in most places.

  ‘ATR’. All-Terrain Rovers. Six-wheeled vehicles designed for passenger and cargo transport both in- and out-bubble. The out-bubble versions are independent habitats.

  ‘Bubble’. An artificial dome designed to allow human habitation of planets where the local environmental conditions (atmosphere, temperatures, radiation, etc.) would otherwise be deadly. A ‘portabubble’ is a bubble designed to be transportable.

  ‘Floater’. Zero-g worker.

  ‘Groundling’. A person who has never been to space.

  ‘Grub’, ‘grubber’. Someone who moils about in the dirt, i.e. someone who lives on a colony on a planet rather than an artificial environment. Alternatives: ‘dirtsider,’ ‘colonist.’

  ‘Holos’. 3-D photographs.

  ‘Out-worlder’. On a colony, someone who was born anywhere else.

  ‘Psi-gifted’. Someone who possesses unusual mental powers, such as telepathy, true empathy, precognition, telekinesis, hypnosis, etc.

  ‘Threedees’. 3-D movies.

  ‘Torus’ (plural ‘tori’). A structure, in this context a space station, shaped like a ring doughnut.

  ‘Tuber’, ‘tube people’. Someone who lives on an artificial habitat in space. Cylindrical space stations are called ‘tubes’ because of their shape, but the label of ‘tuber’ is also applied to people who live on a torus.

  First, second, and third class. The class system harks back to the time when humanity first took to space. In a nutshell, the first class owned the ships. The second class bought their tickets. The third class worked their way on board.

  Discography

  Apropos of nothing, here’s a list of the music I listened to while writing this.

  Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

  At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command

  Beirut – Gulag Orkestar

  Beirut – The Flying Club Cup

  Beirut – The Rip Tide

  Beirut – No No No

  Beirut – Lon Gisland

  Beirut – Elephant Gun

  Beirut And Realpeople – March Of The Zapotec/Holland

  Boiled In Lead – From The Ladle To The Grave

  Charlie Grey and Joseph Peach – Charlie Grey and Joseph Peach EP

  Charlie Grey and Joseph Peach – Waves Rise From Quiet Water

  Circle of Dust – Machines of Our Disgrace

  Elephant Sessions – All We Have Is Now

  Elephant Sessions – The Elusive Highland Beauty

  Ghostpoet – Shedding Skin

  If These Trees Could Talk – Above The Earth, Below The Sky

  If These Trees Could Talk – If These Trees Could Talk

  If These Trees Could Talk – The Bones of a Dying World

  If These Trees Could Talk – Red Forest

  Khebez Dawle – Khebez Dawle

  Robbie Greig – Robbie Greig & Friends

  Sigur Ros – Hvarf-Heim

  Smok – Horizons

  stellastarr* – stellastarr*

  Tami T – I Never Loved This Hard This Fast Before

  Tannara – Trig

  Tom Waits – Alice

  Tool – Lateralus

  Weezer – Weezer

  About the author

  Robin Banks finds writing in the third person intensely creepifying, so I won’t.

  I was born a while ago, and these days I don’t regret it too often. A fan of peregrinations with a terrible tendency to get myself marooned, I currently dwell with an excessive number of dogs right at the end of the big cabbage field. That’s the big field with the cabbages, not the field with the big cabbages. Don’t be silly.

  I enjoy road trips, dogs, guitars, and getting into scrapes. My favorite writers are Tom Robbins, Spider Robinson, and Matthew Stover, Rory Miller for non-fiction. I refuse to be landlocked, because you need to have some standards. I like Irish coffee with condensed milk in lieu of cream. You can’t help some people.

  There is a rumor going around that I might in fact be a collection of raccoons hiding inside a hoodie, but that’s not been confirmed to date, possibly because I bite.

  All about me:

  Through a combination of insubordination and skullduggery, I managed to leave home at fourteen to pursue my chosen course of studies. I had chosen said course precisely because pursuing it would “force” me to leave home, but that’s another story. What I had not paid enough consideration t
o was that the school I selected had been a male-only institution until the year prior to my arrival. The year I joined, the student body was 98% guys. Three years later, when I left, that proportion had gone down to 96% - hooray for diversity! I don’t gender well, but I can’t help being read as female. I am also the size of a hamster. Learning to survive in a sausagefest of such epic proportions was quite an education.

  The school was in a small town in the middle of nowhere. There was a boarding facility attached to it, but when I originally applied to the school it was still male-only. It opened to women shortly after my arrival, but the handful of women who stayed there had a truly terrible time. By then I was already settled, anyway, in a boarding house run by nuns in a nearby city.

  Every day I’d embark on a long-ish commute from my girls-only boarding house to my mostly-male school. The contrast between the two environments was a bit of a headfuck. Needing to survive the commute, which forced me to cross a rather unsavory part of the city, provided another layer of stimulation.

  My life became infinitely more entertaining when I realized that, as long as I continued to churn out good grades, nobody actually cared about any other aspect of my life. During those three years I picked up most of my go-to skills: exam-taking, teaching, hitch-hiking, forgery, and self-defense. The main thing I learnt, though, was that what doesn’t kill you can still make you profoundly fucked up.

  If you enjoyed this, please check out:

  https://www.amazon.com/Robin-Banks/e/B01MU5VWGL

  https://www.facebook.com/HeinleinsFinches

  https://godsbastard.wordpress.com/heinleins-finches/